SAFAL – Odisha's Common Credit Portal


 


Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik launched the common credit portal SAFAL to increase farmers‟ access to loans.

SAFAL (Simplified Application for Agricultural Loans) is India’s first online agricultural credit facilitation portal. This common credit portal eases access to over 300 term loan products provided for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs. These term loan products will be provided by more than 40 partner banks. The portal acts as a one-stop solution for farmers and agri-entrepreneurs.

Success in modern farming depends on a proper combination of money, management, and marketing which are primarily driven by credit. The basic role of credit in Agriculture and allied sectors is to provide capital to acquire any kind of productive assets, land, machinery, etc making credit quintessential for farmers and agri-preneurs for setting up or expanding their practices.

The Common Credit Portal is a one-stop solution for farmers and agri-preneurs to avail formal sector credit from public sector banks, private sector banks, regional rural banks, Odisha State Cooperative Bank and small finance banks. Through the common credit portal, the farmers and agri-preneurs can access 50+ loan products offered by 20+ banks. They can apply for the loan online, track the submitted loan application and receive regular notifications on their application process.

Features of the credit portal

1.    Online Application: User-facing web portal and mobile app to apply for and process the loan products offered by 20+ banks in the agriculture and allied sector. Relevant information such as guidelines, and model DPRs for all loan products are available on the platform.

2.    Status Tracking: Applicants can track the real-time status of their applications on the portal or the app using their mobile number. They can know at what bank-level their application is and who is responsible for processing the next stage of their application.

3.    Proactive Status Notification: Applicants also get notifications via SMS and/or E-mail as their application is reverted, sanctioned or rejected at each stage. They are also informed about any activity that needs to be undertaken at their end.

4.    Online Application Processing: End-to-end processing of applications is enabled online on the web portal and mobile app for each bank level.

5.    Common Portal: The credit portal is a single portal for accessing all bank loan products available for farmers and agri-preneurs across agriculture and allied services.

Advantages of the portal

1.    Farmers

·        Easier loan application process

·        Better visibility on the type of loan products offered by banks

·        Ability to prepare quality DPRs by referring to model DPRs available on the portal

·        Handholding support by the govt to loan-seeking farmers and agri- entrepreneurs

2.    Banks

·        Access to a large pool of loan seekers

·        Better quality applications because of the provision of model DPRs to farmers

·        Visibility of the status of loan applications from the branch to the headquarter level

·        No need for manually digitising sanctioned applications into the Core Banking System

·        Access to the independently calculated Agri-credit score of the loan seeker.

 


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